


What bliss it is to be alive

by camicz



Category: Archie Comics & Related Fandoms, Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Angst, Attempted Murder, Beautiful, Best Friends, Bigger On The Inside, Blood, Bughead Oneshot, Bullying, Child Abuse, Cliques, Dark, Dark Jughead Jones, Dead People, Depression, Determination (Undertale), Emotions, Episode: s02e14 Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Hills Have Eyes, Everyone Needs A Hug, F/M, Film Noir, Friendship, Guilt, High School, Horror, How Do I Tag, Hurt Jughead Jones, Hurt/Comfort, Insanity, Jughead Jones-centric, Love, Minor Character Death, Murder, Murder-Suicide, Oneshot, Prison, Revenge, Riverdale High School, Sad, Sad Ending, Sanity, Serial Killer Jughead Jones, Short One Shot, Sweet Betty Cooper, phsycology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:07:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24594280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/camicz/pseuds/camicz
Summary: A horrific scream shattered the silence. Everybody looked around to see equally terrified faces. Unlike anybody else in the room, I knew what had occurred. Someone had finally found the body. It made me grin, just a little.orJughead Jones murdered one of the students at Riverdale high.
Relationships: Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones
Kudos: 23
Collections: 7th Bughead Fanfiction Awards - Nominees





	What bliss it is to be alive

A horrific scream shattered the silence. Everybody looked around to see equally terrified faces. Unlike anybody else in the room, I knew what had occurred. Someone had finally found the body. It made me grin, just a little. Mrs. Brown told us to stay inside while she went to see what happened. Then, another scream came from the very same teacher that had walked out of the room five minutes prior. While I listened to her wail, I almost felt sorry. Almost. It’s hard to lose a child, but she didn't deserve to have a good life. No one in this town did, not even me. Everybody has something to hide, but for most, it isn’t a dead body. Mrs. Brown had a funeral for her child and everybody was invited and took time off from work. I might have ruined her life but I didn't feel any regret. I was not worried about anyone ever finding out. As everybody said, it was a perfect crime. The only problem was, I didn't want to hurt Trevor in particular. He was always nice enough, and we often exchanged smiles in the halls, and he would lend me something to write with for class from time to time. In reality, I was targeting Mrs. Brown.

Five years earlier I had walked into room 23. “Mrs. Brown?” I asked. “Yes, Forsythe?’’ My parents had recently started to hit me and I needed to tell somebody about it so I had gone to tell my favorite teacher. But when I told her, she said she didn't believe me and that I was an attention-seeking child. What she didn't know was I was going to ruin her life, even if it took me five years. One day Trevor and I had been talking, and he had said something about being his mother's priority, and how it was starting to annoy him. He didn't realize he was lucky his mother paid attention to him. Mine never did. Then I realized that that was the easiest way to ruin her life. Poor Trevor had sentenced himself to death without even knowing it.

My next victim was Betty. We used to be best friends until the day I told her I was living on the streets because things had gotten so bad at home. After that, she ignored me as if she was embarrassed by me for wearing clothes with dirt on them. She knew I couldn’t afford to buy new pants or shirts, but that was not what hurt the most. What hurt the most was the fact that she didn't care; I guess she never did. One day she stayed late at school and left after everybody, everybody except me. After leaving school, she took a left, just as I knew she would. I then put my gloves on to not leave any fingerprints. A little voice in my head asked myself if I wanted to go through with this. After all, even if we weren’t on speaking terms, she was still my best friend. It’s not as though I talked to anyone else anyway, so I didn’t know who else would bear that title. I decided I would do it. She abandoned me when I needed her the most. She never cared about me, so why should I have cared about her? I slowly walked up to her without making a sound, but she must have felt my eyes on the back of her neck because she turned around and jumped when she saw me. She couldn't see my face due to the hood of my jacket casting a shadow over my face. I could tell she was about to start running so I took off my hood because I knew I would never be able to catch up to her; I was never the athletic type. When she realized it was me, relief washed over her, “oh, jughead, it's just you” she said and her shoulders visibly relaxed, then her eyes grew sad. She always looked at me like that and it was infuriating. I hated it. I hated the pity. She opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out. So, I decided I would be the one to speak first, “Hi.” “Hi,” she answered back quickly. We stood there for what felt like an eternity. She finally spoke, “Look, I know that this is totally out of the blue and this is not how I planned it but here it goes. I’m sorry. I know I haven't been there for you. I know I have been ignoring you and it makes me feel like the worst person ever,” she said, with tears in her eyes, and she was right, this was completely out of the blue. Ever since I’d known her it had always been difficult for her to apologize to people, so this was the first time I saw her genuinely say she was sorry to someone. “I know all of that, and I am sorry. I'm sorry for being the worst friend, and I know you probably never want to speak to me again. I completely understand if you don’t, but if you could forgive me it would make me very happy. I can promise you I will never purposely hurt you ever again.” What she said threw me off guard. I was not expecting her to say that. I don’t think she had said one nice thing to me since our falling out. I didn’t know what to say or do. A bunch of questions popped into my head, but only one of them was important at this moment. Did I want to murder her now? No. I didn't. Instead, I had this sudden urge to hug her, so I threw my arms around her. With my head tucked into her shoulder, I wept in her arms. I didn’t know why I was crying. Maybe, I was crying for Trevor, or maybe I was crying simply because I missed my best friend.

The next day at school, I had no idea if Betty was going to talk to me, or if she was just going to ignore me like before. I wasn't sure about anything if I was being honest. I was leaning against my locker when I saw Betty walking in. As she walked past me, we locked eyes, and she gave me the smallest of smiles. I didn't know what to do with that. I just figured she didn't want to ruin her social status or something of the sort, and it was back to how it was a few days ago. But we now exchanged friendly looks which I guess was an upgrade. When the bell rang I ducked my head like a normal teenage boy and went to class. Mr. Sherpan was a very dull teacher so every class I would fall asleep, but he didn't seem to mind because he never said anything about it. He had dark hair with streaks of gray and big round eyes. He had a thick mustache on his upper lip and talked with a slow, deep voice. He had a round stomach and looked exactly how you would imagine and high school English teacher would look like. Even though his class was boring, I got decent grades. Not good grades, but decent. This class was different though since I was in a very good mood because of my rekindled friendship with Betty. It seemed to confuse Mr. Sherpan quite a bit because when I raised my hand to answer a question he had a puzzled look on his face and then asked if I was stretching. I was in such a good mood that I was practically skipping in the halls. People looked at me funny but I didn't care because I had a friend. When the bell for lunch finally rang I got out of my seat and made my way to the cafeteria. When I arrived at the dining hall, it was already full, but I was still hungry, so I went to stand in line. While in line Betty and I made eye contact from across the hall, and to my surprise, she came my way. When she finally reached where I was standing in line, she simply stood next to me as if it were a daily occurrence. I had a feeling if I let the silence be, no one would start the conversation. “Hi.” “Hi,” she said in return. “Where are you gonna eat?” “Oh, I was hoping I could eat with you. Only if you want to, though!” she said, seeming very apprehensive. So I gave her a smile to ease her nerves and just said “Okay.” “Oh, thank God! I was afraid you would say no,” she said, clearly relieved that I didn't refuse to sit with her. Even if I had said no, she would probably have sat with me anyway just to make a point. That's one of the things that I remember about her, she was always very headstrong. Maybe that was just the old Betty though. I clearly didn’t know her that well anymore. We ate lunch in silence. As I devoured my food, she barely touched hers, and her leg was bouncing up and down, something which I knew meant she was stressed. I had a feeling it had something to do with me, so I nudged her leg with my own and asked, “What's wrong?” and she looked up at me in surprise. “It’s just that I was thinking about your current living situation and I wanted to know if maybe you would be open to living with me for a while... I already talked to my mom about it and she is totally fine with it. She even said you could live in the guest room.” Betty had always grown up in wealth. She had a chauffeur and her house was enormous, with seven bedrooms, even if it was just her and her parents. I was lost in thought and she took my silence negatively and quickly started speaking again, “I just thought that maybe you would need a better place to-” “That would be wonderful, Betty. Thank you. I promise I won’t take up too much space, and if I ever cause any problems, you can just kick me out, and I swear that I will not hold it against you,” I said with a grin. She smiled and just nodded in agreement.

That night I went to settle into my new room at Betty’s house. Her mother greeted me with open arms just like she used to and told me how much she had missed me over the years. She was always very kind, and I had never seen her look at her family and friends with anything else but love and adoration. I always admired her for that; she always seemed to accept people for who they were. When I was little she was more of a mother to me than my own mother ever was. At that moment I remembered the time when I was seven when I fell and scraped my knee. Tears had sprung to my eyes in the middle of the playground. She had picked me up, cleaned my wound, put a bandaid on it, and hugged me. She always seemed to pick me back up when I fell, and for that, I owed her everything. I woke up to a ringing sound at six o'clock. I turned off the alarm clock and fell back to sleep. I woke up for the second time when Betty came stomping in my room telling me to wake up. I got up and went downstairs in the clothes I slept in, my hair all messy. I was so tired that I missed a stair and slipped down the rest of the stairs. “Are you okay?” asked Betty, running to my side to help me get up. “Yeah, I’m fine,” I said, my voice hoarse from just having woken up. “Jeez, you scared me!” We both laughed a little, then went downstairs to eat breakfast.

The rest of the day went by smoothly, besides the fact that I couldn’t think of anything else but Trevor. I tried not to think about what I had done. I knew I couldn’t tell anyone about it. I felt so guilty. I kept getting flashbacks from that night. His awful screams of terror, the body, the last tear that ran down his face. I tried everything to get those images out of my head. The thought that I killed Trevor plagued my thoughts until a worse one came to my mind. I had been on the verge of killing Betty; I planned on killing the one person that cared about me. The one person who took me in, even if it took a while. I thought I was going insane. That's all I could think about. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat, no matter how hungry and tired I got. My mind was conflicted. I knew I could trust Betty, but I also knew she would never forgive me for what I did. No one would. I knew that if I turned myself in I would probably rot in a dirty cell for the next twenty to thirty years, but I also knew that if I kept my mouth shut the guilt I had for the sins I committed would eat at my soul until I went either insane or just turned into a shell of a person. It went on like that for an entire week until I decided that I had to turn myself in. I couldn’t keep going on like this. I was going to go to the station and tell them what I did.

*******

February 17, 2016, was the day I was finally arrested for the murder of Trevor Brown. The station was dark and looked pretty worn down; they didn't really need a sheriff’s office because of how little crime there was in this town. The mess I had made was the worst thing that had ever happened in this town. Trevor’s mother came to the station with dark circles under her eyes, yelling I was a monster, tears streaming down her face. She yelled until she had no energy left, collapsed onto the floor, wept until her eyes grew dry. She sat slumped over like that for a while, then got up, puffy-eyed, with a tear-stained face, and quietly left, leaving an eerie feeling to the already dimly lit room. I had never seen someone who seemed so broken. It was like everything that was holding her together just broke. It was a difficult scene to watch without averting your eyes, but at the same time, it was hard to look away. After finally doing the right thing, I felt like I could breathe again, after months of feeling suffocated. I could begin to feel something real. For years, I had only felt anger and hatred, and now I was finally able to let go of all the pain my parents caused me. I obviously didn’t feel anything close to happiness, but for the first time in a long time, I felt free, which was ironic because I was going to be locked up for half of my life. I was informed by a guard that I needed to be moved to a different location. It was too small of a station to keep me there. I would be transferred to a juvenile detention center in the morning and would not be released before then. I walked out of my cell, my head down, my hands cuffed behind my back, accompanied by a security guard who pushed me forward every two seconds. As I walked forward, I saw Betty. She looked up at me with a question in her eyes, and I could tell she wanted to ask me if it were true, that I was a cold-blooded murderer, but all I could do was turn my face away in shame. As I walked through the scuffed up exit door, I looked back at her. She stared at me with sad eyes, a small tear rolling down her face as I was firmly shoved into the back of the police car. As the car drove further and further away from the station, one thought entered my mind: things could be worse; at least I was not dead, at least I was not Trevor.

**Author's Note:**

> I really enjoyed writing this Oneshot! What do you think happened to betty after all of this? let me know in the comments! And if you liked this leave kudos to let me know, thanks for reading!


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